Hot Start to August

Last week I wrote up a blog post and then somehow it was mysteriously deleted. Perhaps by me. I probably got interrupted at some point and hit the wrong key. Who knows? That Wednesday had been particularly eventful, and not in a good way. I had arrived home around 5:30 to find multiple police cars in front of the house, and soon learned that our neighbor who lived in one of the apartments across the street had died, apparently a few days prior, and was discovered after someone had called in for a wellness check. So we're sitting on the porch watching all of that and ten minutes later I  hear the sound of a car crash out on S. Claiborne. A moment later a car goes driving past Pine Street with front-end damage, dragging various parts of the car along with it. I ran around the corner and saw a car up against the bit oak tree at S. Claiborne and Lowerline, and start walking down there to see if they need help. There were already a few people there, and someone was sitting on the ground outside the driver's side of the car. As I got closer, I realized it was another neighbor, and she was injured. Her 18-year-old dog was also with her, and fortunately someone there offered to take the dog to the dog hospital (turned out to be OK). I ran back around to my house and alerted the police that there was an accident with injury, and tried to contact my neighbor's husband, who was apparently already on his way over there from the opposite direction. The police arrived right away, as did an ambulance. Down the street, about four blocks away, I could see another police car stopped in the left lane with its lights on. It was apparently behind the car that had hit my neighbor. Anyway, just in general not a good Wednesday evening on the block when five police cars, an Ambulance, a Fire Truck, the Crime Unit, and the Coroner are all involved. The neighbor had some significant broken bones and spend a few days at the hospital.

So I'll just leave that there and move on to last week, during which a relative of the next-door neighbor died suddenly and, then on Sunday, the A/C at my house stopped working. Riding-wise, the week was a pretty typical one, and the weekend was just a little bit atypical. All week we were in this heat dome of some sort, with clear skies and blazing August sun. Most mornings, the outdoor temperature at my house was reading around 82°F before dawn. 

Friendly Friday

On Wednesday I went out to meet the WeMoRi as usual, jumping onto the back of the group somewhere along Marconi. This is always a little difficult because I'm going from 18 mph to 27 mph, and it always takes a couple of miles to adjust. In the meantime I'm deeply in what we used to call "oxygen debt." The problem is always made worse by the relatively sharp turn from Toussaint onto Wisner. If you are anywhere near the back of the group, there's a major accordion effect there that typically requires a full-gas effort to close up the gaps. That morning there was one rider a couple of wheels ahead of me who let the gap open too much and tried to close it too late. A couple of riders went flying past me and made the bridge, but by the time I went around, still gasping for air, my brief 27 mph effort was clearly not going to suffice. It looked like we were all good and well dropped at that point until William J came past on the left and put in a long Hero Pull at 30 mph that dragged a few of us across the gap and back into the draft. It was a workout.

It was some time on Friday afternoon when MJ messaged me with a dire warning. "Peyton is riding Giro tomorrow" was all it said, and all it needed to say. Saturday morning there was a good group on hand as we rolled out for the Giro Ride. With Will and Peyton and a few others fast riders on hand, I knew it was going to be a hard ride. There was a northeast wind blowing, so I figured that, with so many riders in the group, it wouldn't be too hard to sit in the group. Everything was going along nicely down Hayne Blvd., but when we turned south onto Paris Road the front of the group hit the gas, and exactly what had happened on Wednesday happened again. One rider let a gap open, a couple of rider barely bridged across, and despite our 29 mph speed from Hayne to Chef, we were left to fend for ourselves. Once on Chef there was a very brief lull in the group up the road, but everyone in our group was apparently too gassed to take advantage of it. 

Saturday Giro

Meanwhile, I think Will and Peyton had gone off the front, so right away that group was in chase mode, which effectively killed any slim chance we might have had to regroup. So the rest of us got together in a nice paceline out to Venetian Isles as the front group receded into the distance. I figured we'd all get back together for the ride back. I was wrong. As we approached the turn-around spot, Will and Peyton were already on the way back - I guess they didn't stop to regroup. Everyone else was kind of scattered all over the place, so it took a while for the group to get back together. On the one hand, it made the ride back a little better, but I'd have preferred to have had the big motors on the front. Anyway, it was still a pretty fast ride back. Rumor  has it that the Seabrook bridge could reopen to single-lane traffic around the end of the month, so that will be nice if it actually happens.

So with the Saturday Giro in the books, I decided to make the drive over to Bay St. Louis (more or less) for a 65-mile ride with Steve and Charles and Apryl and a few others. It was a 7 am start, so I was on the road around 5:45. When I arrived at the parking lot on Vidalia Road I was quite surprised how cool it was. I was not surprised that my legs were clearly not recovered from the prior day's thrashing. Fortunately, this ride was going to be just paceline stuff, so although the little climbs were probably going to hurt a little, I knew I'd be fine. The first couple of hours felt amazingly cool, but by the time we were fifty miles in the weather was starting to remind us that it was, indeed, August. Even so, compared to the prior week's rides, this one was a welcome relief, and it was still cool enough that we sat around under the big oak tree in the parking lot for a while afterward. Back at home I unloaded the car and then when I walked into the house I thought it felt a little warm. I figured the wife must have been sitting on the porch with the front door open, but a little later I realized that the air-conditioner compressor wasn't running. These things always seem to happen on weekends, don't they? So I called my long-time A/C folks at Taylor and Tyler, who have apparently now merged with Surgi's and Bryan's, and to my great amazement they had someone at the house 45 minutes later. Naturally, I was dreading what the guy was going to find. As it turned out, the condenser unit's coils were completely clogged with dirt (thanks again to the Road Work people leaving us on a dirt road for a year), which had caused the unit to overheat. Fortunately the system detected that and shut itself down before any more damage was done. The coils got cleaned, a leaky valve got replaced, the unit was reset, and by mid-afternoon we were back in business, although my wallet was $400 lighter. Even so, it was a far, far better outcome than having to replace the compressor unit which would have cost thousands of dollars.

With our trip to Olympia coming up later this week, I took the old Orbea apart and stuffed it into my Airport Ninja bag, so at least that is ready to go. I think that bike is close to 20 years old now. I'd bought it from Gina about a year after Katrina. It's still functional, and this will be the second time I've flown with it. Compared to the Bianchi, I wouldn't be quite so devastated if the airline destroyed it, since it is my main backup bike.